People who suffer from lack of muscular control due to some genetic defect, disease related problem or physical injury, have great difficulty sitting in chairs. Although the people may be mentally alert, they are normally confined to beds which does not advance their social outlook, particularly when they may have to cope with the physical disability for many years. In order to encourage social behavior and a feeling of well being in the physically handicapped person, attempts have been made to strap or tie the individuals into a chair to keep them in an upright position. If not so tied, they tend to lean to either side and/or their arms drape out over the chair. The difficulty with strapping people into a chair is that it does not encourage them to use their muscles in any way to maintain some degree of muscle tone. Thus the muscles become more and more flaccid or weak and eventually deteriorate.
An example for tieing a person into a chair is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,992,057. The chair has crotch and arm supports and the straps are passed around the person's chest to hold them erect in the chair. Other attempts have been made to support a person's torso in a chair, such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,704,910. An adjustable cushion torso engaging member is adapted to be mounted on a wheelchair or the like for purposes of supporting the person's torso to enable the person to sit upright. The torso support can be adjusted to the front side and back side of the torso and vary the elevation of the support.
It is important to encourage correct posture of the physically handicapped so that they use their own muscles as best they can to support themselves in the chair. As noted, strapping the person in the chair does not improve posture because the unsupported portions of the body may tend to lean or slouch.
The support system, according to this invention, for securement to a chair back encourages the patient to use his or her muscles in sitting upright in the chair.